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I read it and can only say its a load of nonsense (in my humble opinion). Nothing about how the war started for the Vietnamese, nothing about the Geneva conference, nothing about the South Vietnamese government and who they were.
It seems like propaganda to me.
you did not read the WHOLE article then. Its all touched on in detail with the informations resources mentioned.
"Not only didn't the war end after his election, but he indiscriminately bombed NV and even considered nukes. Then he resigned as a crook and we lost in 1974/1975."
There is a HUGE gap in time in your rant.
A simple question, WHO ended our involvement in Nam and WHO pulled us out?
Certain NOT a dem who got us there in the 1st place and who escalated the situation there.
The Vietnam War was a proxy war to show the USSR, and China that we would stand up to the spread of Communism. It worked, but was managed very poorly by LBJ and McNamara. Nixon took the gloves off from our policy if not bombing the North so we could gain leverage in negotiating the peace. Did it work? Not really, but at least he got us out. Yes it was a cluster all around.
"Why have Americans become more supportive of the Vietnam war?"
Because over the years they have found out how much the media LIED to them about the war and we were losing when in FACT we were winning, Walter Cronkite for example claiming on nation TV, "We have lost" at the start Of the TET ofensivewge in fact we WON. Even the head of the North Viet Nam military said so.
The minute we went there we lost. No one attacked our borders and there is nothing in the Constitution about nation building.
You didn't read your own article nor did you read my original post.
the 20-40 million number has nothing to do with executions or "murder", it had to do with economic abrup economic change and dissolution of the traditional food chain.
That is far and away from "Mao murdered...".
I wrote that Mao killed 20-40 million people. So what if many of the deaths were due to disastrous economic policies? Many were murdered though. I find it bizarre that you are defending Mao.
Quote:
Frank Dikötter, a Hong Kong-based historian, said he found that during the time that Mao was enforcing the Great Leap Forward in 1958, in an effort to catch up with the economy of the Western world, he was responsible for overseeing "one of the worst catastrophes the world has ever known".
Mr Dikötter, who has been studying Chinese rural history from 1958 to 1962, when the nation was facing a famine, compared the systematic torture, brutality, starvation and killing of Chinese peasants to the Second World War in its magnitude. At least 45 million people were worked, starved or beaten to death in China over these four years
The Vietnam War was a proxy war to show the USSR, and China that we would stand up to the spread of Communism. It worked, but was managed very poorly by LBJ and McNamara. Nixon took the gloves off from our policy if not bombing the North so we could gain leverage in negotiating the peace. Did it work? Not really, but at least he got us out. Yes it was a cluster all around.
Having grown up in that era I would say that over time it isn't so much a change in perception of now supporting the war some much as having a more sympathetic/compassionate view of the soldiers who fought in the war.
At the time soldiers would be coming home, you read stories from them about how they would be spit on by protesters of the war.
With the passage of time I think, at least from my perspective, the war still was a mistake in US policy and a waste of lives, but the soldiers still deserve our respect - I think that is what has changed, imho.
I wrote that Mao killed 20-40 million people. So what if many of the deaths were due to disastrous economic policies? Many were murdered though. I find it bizarre that you are defending Mao.
Failed economic policies aren't murder and even then all the deaths aren't directly attributed to the policies in Beijing.
It was a period of social and economic turmoil, and food supplies started to stabilize during the Cultural Revolution and in some cases lowered overall hunger rates.
Saying Mao "murdered" forty million people is not only a gross exaggeration but also a lie used to make really progress in some cases seem like terrorism.
The Vietnam war ended for America in 1973. The South Vietnam state collapsed in 1975. Most of our population was not alive in 1975, the Vietnam years of the late 60s through the early 70s were an eon ago for millennials......decades before they were born. Also worth noting is that the war was a failure, not something Hollywood or history likes to remember in this nation. The Vietnam war is to far back and not significant enough for people today to have remained educated on it. Very few people could tell you why we were there to begin with. Ask your average millennial what the Gulf of Tonkin incident was, or what is Tet? Or the Easter offensive? Operation rolling thunder or operation linebacker? How about the peace talks in 73? Really this history is not taught and most do not know it. Most could not even tell you who Ho Chi min was.
We must understand a historical event in order to make a good judgment on it. Clearly if everyone understood how we got into Vietnam and how we got bogged down there it would be universally seen as a mistake. Would I call it immoral? I would not go that far but it clearly was a bad move that cost thousands of Americans their lives.
Actually I believe we got evolved in the Vietnam originally because of the SEATO treaty.
Ike sent 'military advisors' to Vietnam in the 50's and Kennedy sent more in early 1960's... the war escalated after the trumped up Gulf of Tonkin lies by LBJ.
The Vietnam War was a proxy war to show the USSR, and China that we would stand up to the spread of Communism. It worked, but was managed very poorly by LBJ and McNamara. Nixon took the gloves off from our policy if not bombing the North so we could gain leverage in negotiating the peace. Did it work? Not really, but at least he got us out. Yes it was a cluster all around.
In other words, after America so miserably failed to stop communism from establishing itself in Cuba just 90 miles away, it needed the Vietnam War to prove to USSR and China that America was still willing to stand up against communism. I always thought it looked strange to allow communism to go on in Cuba while trying to stop it 10,000 miles away in Vietnam. President Kennedy's agreement with the USSR from the Cuban missile crisis probably explains why Cuba has to remain communist clear to this day.
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